South African varient found in community in parts of UK

[Cuellar]

How to stay sane? Just accept we'll never see the people we love again?

Yup

[Fambo Number Mive]

Fucking hell. So just as cases are going down and, on a personal level, my parents are about to get the vaccine, it's a waste of fucking time and another more lethal wave is coming?

How to stay sane? Just accept we'll never see the people we love again?

I think it only takes a few weeks to tweak the vaccine for mutations. Whether they then have to revaccinate I don't know but hopefully they will continue to increase vaccine delivery capacity. In the meantime, we don't know how much of a reduction in effectiveness the new strains are.

I note in your link Professor Laurence Young says:

Novavax report a 60% efficacy of their vaccine in South Africa which is still a good response noting that the annual flu jab is also around 60% effective

So the vaccines could make a big difference even if the mutated strains do show some resistance. Maybe I'm being too optimistic though.

[Thomas]

Some bloody lad at the JCVI reckons the vaccines will probably be effective against this variant, but maybe not AS effective.

Doesn't look good for Corbyn.

[steveh]

Moderna are reported to be starting trials soon on a tweaked vaccine which is more efficacious with the new variants and others have work underway too. The view seems to be the current vaccines are still going to be fine for a while yet provided no nastier mutations evolve.

Others agree the results don't spell doom yet. "Given the high starting point, it's conceivable [vaccine efficacy] could drop only slightly," Bedford says. Immunity is not binary, adds Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust: "It doesn't suddenly turn on and turn off." A drop in antibody potency could have more subtle effects, such as immunity waning a bit faster, he says. The results with sera from recovered patients also suggest the risk of reinfection with COVID-19 may be rising, especially for people who produced low levels of antibodies during their first encounter with the virus, says Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah. "Most of these people I expect to still have good protection from serious disease. It's on a spectrum, though."

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/vaccine-20-moderna-and-other-companies-plan-tweaks-would-protect-against-new

[jobotic]

Okay, I'll take the pillow off mother's face. For now.

[Bence Fekete]

I've never met a nice South African variant

[evilcommiedictator]

I've never met a nice South African variant

All they just want is to run their diamond mines without the blecks getting uppity

[Wanking Monk of Kefalonia]

New strains will emerge which are more transmissible but less deadly to the point where Sars-Cov-2 has evolved to be like the common cold and we can coexist with it. Of course, the country will be completely economically devastated by futile lockdowns by that stage.

[BlodwynPig]

New strains will emerge which are more transmissible but less deadly to the point where Sars-Cov-2 has evolved to be like the common cold and we can coexist with it. Of course, the country will be completely economically devastated by futile lockdowns by that stage.

So speaks the great economist/epidemiologist/virologist/philosopher WMoK. What will the lottery numbers be on Saturday, Monk?

[steveh]

I see Dido Harding told the Commons Science Committee today "We have seen the new variant emerge, which was something that none of us were able to predict," following up last September's excuse of "I don't think anybody was expecting to see the really sizeable increase in demand we've seen."

[jobotic]

So now the Oxford vaccine apparently has 10% efficacy against the SA variant. But that's only regarding mild cases. I'm sorry I don't understand.

Are we fucked or not?

[Cuellar]

Just got to wait for them to modify the vaccine, and hope the govt doesn't do something cretinous like opening everything up again allowing the SA variant to spread everywhere.

[Bernice]

Fucked then.

[Cuellar]

Yeah

[katzenjammer]

Well...

researchers believe it will still prevent severe illness, hospitalisation and death.

Although it doesn't say who those researchers are or why the believe that

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/07/covid-variants-and-vaccine-resistance-all-you-need-to-know

[Fambo Number Mive]

Found this interesting, from the Guardian story linked above:

Researchers from the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology & Infectious Disease, led by Prof Ravi Gupta, found that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine successfully protected against the Kent variant, called B117. "Our findings suggest that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is likely to offer similar protection against B117 as it does against the previous strain of Sars-CoV-2," he said.

"Although we found a reduction in the ability of antibodies to neutralise the virus, given the number of antibodies produced following vaccination, this should still only have a relatively modest effect and people should still be protected."

People over 80 needed a second dose three weeks later, however, to mount an adequate antibody response.

Doesn't that make the UK's 12 week gap between doses an issue for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for those over 80?

[BlodwynPig]

Well...

Although it doesn't say who those researchers are or why the believe that

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/07/covid-variants-and-vaccine-resistance-all-you-need-to-know

The news should back off reporting every bit of tittle tattle until propers research has concluded.

[steveh]

This is a better piece which goes into some of the issues with the early state of the research with the newer variants: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/south-africa-suspends-use-astrazenecas-covid-19-vaccine-after-it-fails-clearly-stop

Also get the impression that Boris Johnson's vaccine nationalism has soured some people in other countries to the AZ one.